trotsky's icepick

Yo!
It so warms the cockles of the heart of an Old [Reformed] Trot that his Youngest Daughter has been to Leon Trotsky's death house in Mexico City - you have no idea.
Just after the election of DJ Trump! across the border, too.
Brought her up proper.
Go you good Pinko!
Looks like Leon followed the chicken, but it done him no good.
From age 50...11 years on the run through an island near Istanbul, rural France but banned in Paris, Oslo, then outback Norway; and for the last four years thought he could hide in the biggest city in the world and get away with it - wrong!
Trotsky just would not shut up.
Could never compromise.
A man of principal, if nothing else.
It seems the ice pick was stolen from the Mexican police soon after the assassination and disappeared, and then was claimed to have been "found" 65 years later in 2005 by someone who claimed to be related to some top DF cop at the time and the pick had dried blood on it; Trotsky's grandson [who's now 90 and still lives in DF] offered to have a DNA test if the pick was donated to the museum, but she wanted money for it, and it's never been heard of since.
Along with the main man, it's gone.
As you'll probably know, the bloke that did the pick-weilding did 20 years for murder and was made a Hero of The Soviet Union on his release in 1961...and spent his remaining 17 years in a perpetual summer shuttling between Havana, Cuba and his beach house in Russia, living the dream.

As you will have seen, at least The Trot got a half-way decent concrete headstone, no doubt looking much bigger in this photo than it actually is:

(originally published 12-11-16)